Pastors' Blog

According to the CIA website (www.cia.gov), it’s the same size as the state of Oregon. But clearly Romania is a world apart, and a beautiful world, at that. Karen and I just returned from a seven-city preaching itinerary in that ancient but modern land, and we’re certainly the richer for it!

We were there at the invitation of Pastor Adrian Bocaneanu, president of Speranţa (Hope) Television, the Romanian Adventist television station seen throughout the country. As it turns out, Romania was one of our strongest partners in NET98, the global satellite event that Pioneer began hosting exactly ten years ago last week. And Pastor Adrian was our Romanian translator (along with 38 other language translators each evening downstairs in the Commons) for that five-week, 100-nation satellite event, the NeXt Millennium Seminar. Ten years later the memories still shine! And it was a very special joy to meet new members who trace their conversion to NET98 in Romania. In fact Speranţa TV, which just went on air this past spring, has been re-telecasting the NET98 series nationally. And so a further joy was meeting new visitors last week, who attended one of the evening meetings because of watching the station. Each evening in each city we ended the sermon with an appeal to these visitors, and we’re rejoicing in the decisions for Christ that were made.

Clearly there was one who did not wish for our 2700 kilometer preaching circuit to even begin! On the very first day in Romania, we were driving from Oradea southward to our first preaching appointment. We were stopped to turn left onto another highway, when the pastor driving us “happened” to look into his rearview mirror, just in time to see a utility van racing up behind us, the driver of the van looking down at something in his hand. In a split second response the pastor released the brake, attempting to accelerate forward. Pastor Bocaneanu was in the front passenger seat. Karen and I were both sleeping off our jetlag in the back seat, when we all heard (you know how you can hear a loud sound while you’re asleep?) the screeching of tires, followed in the next second by that awful crunch of metal on metal, as we were hurled across the opposite lane to the side of the road. In that waking moment I thought we’d had a head-on collision. It happened so fast! Shaken, the four of us crawled out our car, glass and metal strewn across the road. In slamming into the rear end of our small Ford, the van driver struck the windshield with his head and was bleeding. Cell phones brought the police and ambulances—Pastor Adrian and our host pastor ended up in the hospital. Karen and I, relatively unscathed, remained behind at the scene of the accident, while police measured off the 100-feet (I stepped it off) skid marks. A few minutes later an auto tire business owner (who can’t speak a word of English) drove up with one of his mechanics (broken English)—he’d been sent by the pastor to come and rescue the American couple at the side of the road! Bless their hearts, that man and his wife and children opened their home to us, fed us, and then drove us to our evening preaching appointment.Pastor Adrian’s whip lash was fortunately not severe. And the other pastor, except for a sore neck, was also released. But both missed the first meeting. You can be sure though that when we crawled back into another car the next morning to drive on to the next city, our prayers of gratitude were fervent to the Lord of the angels: “The angel of the LORD camps around those who fear him, and he delivers them” (Psalm 34:7). No doubt it was the same angel of the Lord who was with those Romanian prisoners held in that communist jail we visited last week—a story I’ll save for today’s teaching, “Primetime: ‘Just Walk Across the Room’” (click on to that title at this website for that story).

Do you know how much $700 billion is? Yes, it is the amount of taxpayer bailout that the United States administration is urging Congress to adopt in order to save the financial institutions that have recklessly accumulated “toxic debt” in their quest for skyrocketing profits. But how much is $700 billion? If the 3,200 students at Andrews University were to be declared the beneficiaries of this bailout, each of our students would be receiving $218,750,000. One could afford college education with a subsidy like that! How much is $700 billion? If you sent the bill to the 330 million men, women and children living in the United States it would cost each of us $2,121.21. But in reality, the addition of this $700 billion bailout to our national debt raises our debt to an unfathomable $11.3 trillion! If this nation began to pay off that debt $100 billion per year, it would take 113 years (assuming not a single penny more were added to that debt during the time). In response to the dramatic downward spiral of both our national and global economies over the last few days, the blogosphere is electric in reaction. Todd Harrison, with Marketwatch.com, opined, “The free market system officially broke last week and the ramifications are profound. A new world order is upon us, one that will forever change the construct of capitalism” (9-24-08). Likening this crisis response to what took place post September 11, 2001, his lengthy two page analysis included the sobering observation, “Indeed, anticipation of social unrest may be the catalyst for the decision to transfer troops back to the states [sic]. Beginning Oct. 1, a military army brigade will be an ‘on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters,’ the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment of this kind” (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/shock-awe-five-things-you/story.aspx?guid={0FBD43B9-A7CA-4816-95C2-2ABA25FE8ED8}). The point is inescapable, irrespective of your political persuasion or economic acumen. We now live in an hour of profound and rapid change. Literally overnight the headlines are rewriting life as we know it. I received an email from a young adult this week asking if there is anything to her remembering reading somewhere once that economic crisis would precede the return of Christ. Revelation 18 unapologetically describes such a global financial meltdown. And you can be certain our own nation will not be spared. How then should we now live? The bold command of Christ bears our brooding: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. . . . for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21 TNIV). Though we may consider ourselves treasureless, nevertheless Jesus’ point is clear—we must invest our very selves in the kingdom of God. If ever there were an hour of history when our treasures would not be just well-spent, but best-spent in advancing the everlasting gospel to the ends of a very uncertain civilization, this would surely be it, wouldn’t you agree? . . . for the pastor’s weekly blog, go to www.pmchurch.tv

So how much power is swirling in Hurricane Ike right now? With Gustav last week and Ike this week and possibly Josephine a few days hence, the destructive power of nature’s howling winds is on more than a few minds! Googling for the answer, I discovered several sources that have calculated that, while it is extremely difficult to compute the power of a single hurricane, it is estimated its power is equivalent to 400 twenty-megaton hydrogen bombs (8000 megatons, or 8 billion tons of TNT). If you converted that to electricity, it would be enough to power our nation for six months!  According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists the “total destructive power” of our planet’s known nuclear arsenals is 5000 megatons—3000 megatons less power than that contained in a single hurricane. The point? Mother Nature packs an explosive wallop unequaled on earth by man! Would that be true of Father Nature, too? True of God? But of course. No wonder then the very first followers of the risen Christ were so insistent on and consistent in connecting with their divine Lord. They called it “prayer.” And even a cursory reading of Acts reveals they did it often. Do you suppose the reason you and I pray as little as we do is because we’ve lost prayer’s connection with the explosive, risen Christ? I.e., prayer for us has become a lazy afternoon breeze, when in fact it conceals in its calm center (like the deceptively still “eye” of a hurricane) the seeds of a mighty wind so powerful that there is nothing in all of humanity or even “satanity” itself that can resist the explosive divine omnipotence prayer taps. Perhaps we’ve been lulled into relegating the practice of prayer to elderly ladies and tiny children, when truth is it is the most potent weapon any earth child can wield! John Dawson in his compelling Taking Our Cities for God observes: “The prayer of a human being can alter history by releasing legions of angels into the earth. If we really grasped this truth, we would pray with intensity, and we would pray constantly” (140). If we really believed in the power of prayer, we really would be praying constantly, wouldn’t we? But of course. Praying for what? “Primetime: Down on All Fours” seeks the answer. The Japanese called it kamikaze—literally, “God’s wind.” Makes you wonder in this season of the hurricane, could that be the blowing that we hear?

Could it  be that it works like a laser? I had the opportunity once to interview John Polkinghorne, the great Anglican physicist and clergyman. Knowing that prayer was an active part of his daily life, I asked him about the necessity of group or collective prayer. Why would we need to band together to pray for someone or something, some event or some need, when (#1) God already knows the need and (#2) God surely doesn’t need to hear multiple reminders from a group in order to respond to that particular (earnest or urgent) need? Perhaps the answer lies in the reality of a laser beam, the physicist responded. Since that interview I’ve turned his response over and over again in my mind. Maybe he’s right? Could it be that prayer works like a laser? I’m certainly no scientist, but the meager grasp I have of how lasers work tells me that the laser beam’s penetrating, burning effectiveness is the result of the banding together of minute streams or photons of light. Yes, one tiny stream is able to penetrate the darkness, as light does. But the secret of the laser’s power is in the banding together of multiple strands of light, creating a burning shaft of energy that can penetrate the thickest obstacle. And that, John Polkinghorne responded, is why collective group praying is so effectual. Rather than random prayers bouncing every which way, group prayer harnesses and focuses the collective prayers into a mighty single beam of divine laser power. The Book of Acts was written by a physician, not a physicist, and yet could it be that the secret of the laser is the reason why corporate prayer is so frequently documented in the early church’s history? No sooner does Jesus ascend to heaven in Acts 1 then the disciples gather in the upper room for a prayer meeting. Ten days of prayer meeting follow—and suddenly all of heaven explodes in Pentecost’s outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Weeks later after the apostles’ incarceration by the authorities, the church gathers for an earnest prayer meeting again in Acts 4. Read the book for yourself—there are prayer meetings all the way through! Early Christians knew the harnessed power of collective, banded laser prayers! Isn’t it “primetime” we tapped into that same collective power? Want to live life on the laser edge of the Spirit? Come and join me this new season once a week in an upper room of collective, focused praying. Let’s call it House of Prayer. And let’s meet here at the church on Wednesday evenings at 7—an Acts community of young and old, seeking a new Pentecost to reach a new generation for Christ! In fact, wherever on earth you’re reading this blog, why don’t you join us by gathering a group in your community—and let’s create a laser band of united prayer just like Acts. “And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31).